Work Text:
Erratum
"Can one illume a leaden sky?" - Charles Baudelaire
There were nights when Violet Baudelaire thought that the only constant thing in her life was distance, the way the stars spun wildly away from the earth, or two lovers took their passion to the grave. In Violet's case it was the separation from the people she loved – first her parents, then some dear friends including triplets and a kindly judge, then the daughter named after her mother who was not, in fact, her daughter but whom she thought of as a daughter anyway, and finally her siblings, who at that moment she had no way of contacting, even as she rinsed the dye from her hair and peeled it back from her forehead with calloused fingers.
She faced her reflection in the hotel mirror and attempted to rub the sleep out of her eyes, knowing full well that it was futile. The past two nights she had been constructing a number of tiny spy devices for an organization she almost wished she was no longer a part of. The most difficult contraption consisted of a camera with an invisible flash that took pictures when the person operating it winked his right eye. She had had to make a number of modifications for the invention to distinguish a twitch from a wink, and a wink from a blink, and by the time she had it working properly she had already consumed so much film that another unit needed to be built.
But that wasn't really what she was thinking of, as she flopped down on the bed and shut her eyes. She was thinking of her brother's glasses slipping down his nose, and her sister's laughter as she pushed them up, while they huddled over a delicious dinner of carrot stew and thinly sliced beef with arugula. The organization was helping her find them – that was the only reason why she stayed, and why she had allowed them to place a certain tattoo around her ankle – but they had so far been unsuccessful. Violet supposed she should not have been surprised.
"Tomorrow," she whispered, to nothing, to the room. To herself, even as the tears crept down her face and slipped quietly into her nightmares, which had weaved in and out of her waking since a cold day on Briny Beach long, long ago.
One of them begins with the morning and Olaf snoring beside her, one hand gripped tight around her wrist so that she can't pull away, so that she is forced to listen to his horrid whistling even as the sun comes up, smelling his terrible smell and looking at his dirty fingernails. There are bruises on her arms, when she looks at them, and she can feel a scar on her face in the shape of a question mark.
Not that she hadn't done some research herself, thumbing through directories, looking at online message boards, meticulously scanning the contents of a number of large books, in order to find the whereabouts of Klaus and Sunny. Nothing had worked, and as she entered their latest headquarters the following morning, sipping an extra-caffeinated espresso, her hopes had not changed particularly.
"Good morning, V," R said, even as L tweaked him on the ear and said, "She's K right now, remember?"
"Good morning," she replied humbly, settling herself down in her cubicle. There was a message taped to her computer that read chittering soundbox, starting to turn dysfunctional. On the top of her toolkit there was another message: coffeemaker + swiss army knife? "Interesting," she muttered to herself, clearing away the rest of the documents piled in front of her. A photograph fell out from the middle of one stack, landing gently in the cleared-out space. It was a picture of her family, a few months before they had left the island. Klaus had discovered a camera in the arboretum, and she found that it was still working. They had celebrated by eating hotdogs, courtesy of Sunny. She remembered Beatrice saying "Yabbo!" and then "Hoddog!" and Klaus saying perhaps he and Sunny could collaborate on a baby dictionary, which Violent could then publish using her own printing device. It had seemed like a fun idea.
She looked up sharply as a shadow was cast over her cubicle. J was leaning over, a kindly smile on his face, although his eyes looked a bit sad as Violet hastily tucked the photograph into a drawer.
"Yes? Would you happen to know where I can pick up the coffeemaker?" She asked brightly.
"They've found her, V," J replied. He was trying to look right into her eyes.
She found that she could not look back, as she shakily answered, "Found who?"
"Your sister," he answered, without a trace of emotion. "Sunny."
She thought about Quigley sometimes, about the snow-capped Mortmain mountains and their shivering legs as he slipped one arm over her shoulder and she leaned against him. The memory had been so overplayed that sometimes it seemed almost like a dream, the way they had talked for a few moments, brushed their mitted hands together as if accidentally. The way her fourteen-year-old heart jumped into her throat when she stood to resume the climb and slipped on the snow, and Quigley had caught her but just barely so that she fell into his lap; and she was certain that it was only imaginary when she recalled his dark eyes closing, his warm mouth meeting hers.
In another dream it might have been Duncan, coming near, telling her a news story. They were sitting at the bottom of a very long elevator shaft, trapped inside a birdcage. "But I can't invent anything with just paper," Violet heard herself saying. "It's just paper. Just a lot of paper," and then she'd get fierce and desperate, and Duncan would say, "It's all we've got," and they'd be kissing in the dark like it was something wrong, something terrible, deadly, secret.
The address J had given her led to an upscale restaurant in a town not far away. Violet almost could not believe it, and she fiddled nervously with the pearls strung on her throat as she clipped towards the entrance on her heels. It felt like just another mission, just another useless charade; but it wouldn't be useless, if she could find Sunny, if it meant being reunited with her sister at last. The waitress at the door confirmed her reservation, and Violet entered the room and sat at her private table, shifting in a way that made people think she was probably cold, or needed to use the bathroom.
She thought of reasons to see the chef, even as the waiter passed her a menu and smiled at her hopefully. Violet had been described by a number of people as pretty, or lovely, as a young girl. As a woman, she could only be described as beautiful, a physical attribute detrimental to her occupation as a volunteer. "I'll have the corned beef," she said politely, "With horseradish. And some red wine." Then I'll complain it's too salty, she thought to herself, and then I'll ask to see the chef, and if they won't let me, I'll storm into the kitchen, and I'll say –
"Dinner is served," the waiter returned, smiling broadly, before Violet could work out the rest of her plan.
"That was quick," she said, although thank you would have been more appropriate.
"Bon appétit!" Was the cheerful (and admiring) reply.
Violet ate the food without much appetite, even if it was delicious. She couldn't complain about the salt even if she wanted to; it had been perfectly seasoned. The horseradish set off the dish wonderfully. As the sharp taste slid down her throat, she recalled the bitter flavor of an apple that had been given to them by a friendly snake. The fruit had cleared away the mass of poisonous shrooms that had been growing inside her, inside all of them. The anxiety growing within her felt similarly uncomfortable, so that even as she gestured at the waiter for the bill, she looked rather unhappy.
"Something wrong with your meal, ma'am?"
"Not at all," she answered, and before she could help herself, "May I know the name of the chef?"
The waiter looked at her in surprise. "Oh, well – Mr. Reavement. I can send him compliments, if you'd like."
"Mr?" Violet asked, her hope deflating. "Mister Reavement? Not a Miss?"
"Oh! Well, there's Miss Baudelaire," the waiter answered, relieved. "She's his apprentice. She's too young to take on the kitchen herself, but ever since she started work here she's been a gem. She can cook half the menu already."
"Sunny," Violet breathed. She felt tears sting behind her eyes. So Sunny was doing well – cooking in an upscale restaurant, which certainly had good pay, with friendly people like this waiter and his wide smile. She was an apprentice to Mr. Reavement, who would certainly notice her skill and keep her as a part of the kitchen. Perhaps she was even dating someone. Perhaps she was the happiest she had ever been.
Violet imagined calling Sunny to her, wrapping Sunny in a warm embrace. She imagined Sunny smiling at first, then noticing the dark circles under her eyes, and the mark that peeked over her heels, and the bandaid on her thumb where she'd cut herself dismantling the coffeemaker. She imagined Sunny's face falling, a dark cloud passing over her brow, as she looked down at the floor and said, "No more. I don't want any more of this." Being thrown into a cage. Being dangled off a cliff. Being threatened with harpoons. She imagined stroking Sunny's hair – what would Sunny's hair be like? – and saying, "But I don't know how to leave." Or I don't know what to do.
And Violet Baudelaire could not do it. She sat, twisting the napkin in her lap, while the waiter stared at her beautiful, distraught face, and wondered if he dared comfort her. Eventually she put the napkin to rest, snapped her purse open, and slapped a huge sum of money on top of the bill the waiter had delivered. "Keep the change," she said, cold and serious. "My compliments to the chef. Both of them." She stood, and walked briskly out the door, her sharp heels clattering away.
Her mother was playing the piano. It was a beautiful melody. (Her mother had intended for Violet to learn the piano, and she had made it through all of four lessons before her inventing skills made her restless and she constructed an entirely different instrument from the piano's wires, keys, and her father's set of spare golf balls.) They were sitting in the recreational room of the mansion, and her father was sipping coffee and paying the bills. There was a gentle wisp of smoke rising from the coffee, as if it had been freshly brewed. The gentle wisp lifted into the air and turned dark gray, and spread across the ceiling, and crept into her nose.
Her mother lay slumped over the piano, her dress on fire. The sheet music had been burnt to a crisp. Violet was screaming as the house fell to pieces around her. Violet was still screaming when she woke up.
Violet couldn't accurately recall all that had happened after they sailed off the island. It had been a long stretch of peaceful floating, sunning, looking expectantly at their new surroundings. They had been apart from the world so long, and Beatrice had never seen it. It was as if every moment was fresh and new, clean and dewy-bright. When the storm began to rise she hadn't even noticed the shape like a question mark bearing out of the current towards them, not until Beatrice pointed at it and shrieked. It hit the boat in the same instant the storm did, and the first lashing of rain melded in with the burst of light that engulfed her as she tumbled into the Great Unknown. The only thing she could say about it was that it had felt like a dream. She walked for a long time, feeling nothing, needing nothing. Then she thought, where. And she thought what. And then who, then how. Then why.
She found herself blinking on the shore, dirty and shocked, her wet hair all over her face. It took her a long moment before she could hoist herself up on one arm – the other had gotten bashed across some rocks, and hurt terribly. She looked out over the horizon, into the nothing that surrounded her, and she thought that if the Great Unknown had been death, then they had all been sorely cheated. Next to all the other secrets, it had been spectacularly uneventful.
She knew that if she had not died, neither would Klaus have died, and neither would have Sunny. But Beatrice, she worried for, and she had hoped passionately that either Sunny or Klaus had managed to rescue her, and take her away to be raised in the most loving way possible, in the absence of her two parents. If Violet could have done it herself, she would have. As it were, the only thing it seemed she had left to do was keep her life from unravelling any further.
After a few days wandering around nearby towns, seeking charity, someone had asked her what she wanted to take with her coffee. When she answered 'sugar,' the man's eyes had enlarged considerably. She saw that he might have been a volunteer; and that she needed to find out if he was, because the volunteers could be the only tie she had left with the world. "From the sugar bowl," she added, hesitantly. Before she knew it she had been hustled into another safe place, and another, where she answered only the questions that had no answers.
Such as, Where is Beatrice?
And, Where is Klaus?
Three months later she found herself heading for the library again, slipping into one long row of books on birdwatching. She ran her thumb along their spines thoughtlessly. She had left the office saying she needed to do research on chocolate's effect on batteries – an unreasonable demand for sustainable energy, to her mind – but she could not concentrate. She paused to sigh, her hand against a volume called Woodpecker. Plucking it off the shelf, the flipped through the book, which had many images of birds drilling their beaks into wood. Klaus might have read this book, once; there wasn't a subject in existence that he was not interested in. She imagined him naming two or three species, then squinting to remember more. And she would half-smile and tell him it wouldn't really be necessary.
She shut the book and slipped it back into the shelf, and moved several aisles away, into Poetry. She picked a book out at random, and opened it. Someone had highlighted passages from a poem with a yellow marker:
You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely
Drawn beneath it, in the same yellow marker, was a smiley face wearing a frown.
There would be four women dancing on a stage with a poorly painted backdrop: Justice Strauss, face radiant under the cheap yellow lights; Aunt Josephine, with a pair of leeches stuck to her shins, her mouth in an unhappy curve; Esme, in a tight red dress that was fashionably appropriate for the salsa; and Kit Snicket, who was gasping with labor. Water was running between her legs, and Count Olaf was suddenly waltzing with her, kissing her gently on the mouth and whispering poetry into her ears. Violet, seated safely in the audience, could not bring herself to clap, but could not tear herself away from the spectacle, either.
The phone rang the minute she stepped out of the shower, squeezing the excess water from her hair. She wrapped a towel around her shoulders and picked it up, wincing as another one of her cuts – from the swiss army knife this time – brushed against the headset. "Yes?"
There was a pause on the other end of the line, almost like hesitation. Then - "I'm calling with regard to a certain opera that we believe you have booked tickets for. The plot is mostly a tragedy, concerning a bad actor who talks a lot and a good actress who is unfortunately mute, and their various friends and family. If you –" There was another pause, so quick Violet nearly missed it, but by then she no longer heard a word that was being said. "If you're interested, the tickets –"
"Klaus," Violet whispered.
Silence.
She sat down in the chair in front of her mirror and put a hand against her forehead.
"Klaus," she whispered again.
On the other end of the line she heard a book being snapped shut; the noise seemed to echo in her ribcage, like her insides had turned viciously alive and were racing around inside of her. Working like gears, she thought, and realized it was nothing funny.
"Klaus." It was not a confirmation, not a question, not a declaration; it simply needed to be said, and it floated there so tangibly she could almost have reached out and grabbed it. Grabbed him, and his neat little collar, and planted kisses all over the wavy hair on his forehead while she demanded to know where on earth he had been and did he know what she had done just looking for him? But no, she didn't care about that, what she cared about was embracing him tightly and knowing that he was real.
More silence. This one lasted more than she thought she could bear, and she nearly hung up.
"Violet?"
"Blue, actually," she answered, and then she started sniffling uncontrollably.
On the other end of the line, Klaus said, "Wait for me. I'm coming."
Distance pulled at Violet even as she waited in the lobby of the hotel remembering what it felt like to be stood up, to be left behind, to be taken for a fool. There was no way of knowing, of course, whether any of those would happen, or if the person she was waiting for would arrive as he had promised he would. The only thing she knew was that she had thrown on a set of clothes and a jacket, hurriedly; that her hair was a mess, and that she thought it was probably a good idea that she hadn't combed it, in case she actually needed a disguise. Perhaps she had been hallucinating. Perhaps she had been hearing things. Perhaps one good dream had leaked into her life at last, and was waiting to be realized. She hoped it was real, and that the alarm wasn't going to go off suddenly, calling her to another morning that meant nothing.
She stopped thinking, though, about everything, when someone came through the door and started to walk straight towards her.
The man – boy? – young man that approached her was tall, and his short hair had been cut to keep up with the latest trend. But he had a familiar pair of glasses on, and the way he walked steadily towards her, with both hands in his coat pocket, made her realize that she had gotten it right, after all, even if he had spoken in a much deeper tone, over some telemarketer's number. Violet stood frozen in her place, not knowing what to do. When at last he paused before her, panting, grinning, it was all she could do stick out her hand and say, "How do you do."
And her brother took her hand. Shook it, firmly, squeezed it, and said, "How do you do."
It was only five minutes later, after a very long elevator ride and a very long walk down what had suddenly become a very long corridor, behind a door with two more locks than was necessary, that Violet was able to throw her arms around him and exclaim, "I thought you were, I thought –"
"I thought so too," Klaus said, in a way that she knew was supposed to shush her, as he embraced her tightly. She could feel his ribs through his clothes, the outline of two books in his jacket pockets. "But I found the messages you left in the library. I've been searching, also, I've never stopped...after the boat ride, I figured, there was nothing left to do. But sometimes I thought it might be better, that it turned out this way; maybe you had forgotten – when I learned that you didn't, I thought, you should have forgotten -"
"I wouldn't have," Violet said decisively. "I wouldn't. That would be a mistake."
"A mistake," Klaus repeated, and Violet knew he was thinking it had all been a mistake, the mystery, their lives, the distance that had lasted for too long between them, the fact that Sunny wasn't with them. It was almost too huge an error to be believed. Violet felt Klaus patting her hair. He didn't say it was going to be all right. They had stopped saying that to each other long ago; it sounded far too much like a lie. "So it's not?"
"No," Violet replied, and realized she meant it. This was worth it. Sunny, too, needed to know, deserved to, because nothing could hurt more than not being together. They had borne it long enough. They didn't have to. Not anymore.
"You joined them, didn't you?" Klaus asked gently. Violet let go of him at last, and stared at the floor.
"Yes," she answered, aware of the way her ankle itched underneath her dark-washed jeans; the way it burned with confession.
"You had to," Klaus answered, and he sounded so sorry that she nearly hugged him again; but they had been apart for quite some time, and were supposed to be respectable adults, no longer children huddling together in terror. Instead, she shook her head, and said, "I chose to."
When Klaus smiled in reply it was as if the room lit up. "You're here," Violet nearly said, but she only thought it, repeated it in silence, like a hymn. A prayer. Klaus slept that night on the unoccupied twin bed that Violet had been forced to book since she began work in this town, turning over only twice or thrice, murmuring things that included the colors of flowers, the swiftly coming dawn.
The dream involves a ribbon, that she uses to tie back her hair. She's thinking hard of the best way to go about things. Find Sunny, talk to Sunny, make sure she's doing okay, that the restaurant is paying her enough. Find Beatrice, whom Klaus will assure her is safe and sound, and excels alarmingly at Biology and Chemistry, and also at Poker, for reasons he cannot fathom. She will turn in her resignation letter. R, L, and J will treat her to a drink, and she will finish B's coffeemaker-swiss-knife, have it patented, then sell it for tons of money. The question mark will stop showing up in every body of water she sees. Klaus will read to her from a book, maybe a novel he is working on. It will be about a dystopian universe, and apple cores. Maybe they will get to see the Quagmires, who are busy protecting the secret of the sugar bowl. Maybe Quigley will say, "Remember, on that mountain?" and she'll have to spend a whole minute tongue-tied.
Maybe distance is not a big deal when there is hope picking up the phone and dialling her number, saying her name, in a world very far from the stars, where a beautiful girl named Violet Baudelaire wakes up.